Composer John Corigliano’s Clarinet Concerto is one of contemporary classical music’s most important — and notoriously difficult — pieces to play. Taking center stage to perform the work with a symphony orchestra is a major moment in any musician’s career.
Jason Shafer, the Colorado Symphony’s principal clarinet, wanted to be sure he made the most of it. He spent a year preparing for this unique challenge, which he will take on this weekend at Denver’s Boettcher Concert Hall.
He also took the highly unusual approach of reaching out to the composer himself for some guidance on how best to interpret the work, which was written in 1977, for a live audience in 2023.
“I had this realization that this guy is a legend. He’s still alive, still teaching at Juilliard, and so admired by the musical community,” said Shafer.
“So I just sent him an email, out of the blue, and told him a little about myself and that I was playing this work.”
The composer, who is 85, wrote back the same day. He would be delighted to help.
So Shafer headed to New York with his clarinet and played for the composer, who is widely considered one of the most consequential figures of American music. Corigliano has written multitudes of classical offerings in his career, orchestral and chamber pieces, choral works, operas and film scores.
His pile of awards and recognitions is very tall: five Grammys, an Academy Award and a Pulitzer Prize. And he did that by pushing the boundaries, rethinking the way 500-year-old instruments could come together and fearlessly challenging musicians to make difficult sounds, including — in the most relevant case to the upcoming weekend — the opening notes of his clarinet concerto.
“When I played it for him, he just said “that is pretty nasty, isn’t it,” Shafer recounted in an interview last week. But the exchange opened up the pair up to some deep talk on the rest of the work. Corigliano gave him favorable reviews for his interpretations
“He was very gracious and very complimentary and seemed to really like what I was doing,” Shafer sad. “But he also gave me some very interesting thoughts, answered some of the questions that I had about the piece and gave me some very specific interpretive details.”
Denver audiences will get to hear the result on three occasions starting on Nov. 3. The program will be led by the orchestra’s Principal Conductor Peter Oundjian and opens with Beethoven’s overture to “Egmont.” The closing work is Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6, also known as his “Pathétique Symphony.” It was the composer’s final work and known for its dramatic highs and lows.
Still, it is likely to be the Clarinet Concerto, about 30 minutes long, that audiences will remember on the drive home. Hearing it live is a unique experience in concert halls — it is popular but not performed too often, and not locally — because Corigliano took great liberties in his physical arrangement of the players.
I do not want to give too much away because, if you’ve never heard the piece in person, there are a number of surprises. I will just say that sounds come from unexpected places, and it’s is good to keep an open mind, in addition to open ears.
Shafer offered some advice to audience members on how to approach the piece as listeners, noting “the wild, unpredictable cadenzas” of the first movement, which can simply be dazzling.
“It was one of the most difficult things I ever had to learn technically, in terms of the speed and the challenge,” he said.
The second movement assumes a less frantic pace, but things remain intense. Corigliano wrote the music in memory of his father, the musician John Corigliano Sr., who had died a few years earlier, and this is where the work’s most emotionally dramatic moments are wrung out.
It is up to the principal clarinetist to make them real, not an easy task after the rigor of the first movement. It is a heavy responsibility to convey the somber qualities that make the piece so highly regarded, requiring not just virtuosity, but also a bit of musical acting. “Even though technically it’s very slow, I would actually say it is probably one of the scariest things to play,” said Shafer.
The third movement brings it all home with more than a few audacious moments, giving the piece its final “wow effect,” as Shafer put it. That is where some of the most surprising elements show up.
Shafer, who is 36 and joined the orchestra in 2013 after winning an audition for the principal clarinet job, recalled the first time he encountered the piece. He put on a recording one afternoon at home.
“I remember thinking, ‘Oh, I know this is supposed to be a great masterwork for the clarinet. I’ll kind of listen to it in the background while I’m writing some emails or something,’” he said.
Peter Oundjian has served as guest conductor with the Colorado Symphony many times. He now takes over as principal conductor. (Provided by peteroundjian.com)“But as soon as it started, I just immediately stopped everything I was doing, and I just listened through the whole thing, doing nothing else.”
He found the twists and turns captivating. “It gives you that sense of I have no idea what’s going to happen next. And that’s not something that I get from many pieces of music,” he said.
This weekend, he wants to share that appreciation, those musical surprises, with audiences in his hometown orchestra.
“I actually think the most powerful thing about it is that sense of anticipation,” he said.
IF YOU GO
The Colorado Symphony performs John Corigliano’s Clarinet Concerto within its program Nov. 3-5 at Boettcher Concert Hall in the Denver Performing Arts Complex. Tickets and info at 303-623-7876 or coloradosymphony.org.
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